MY PHOTO ALBUM / COLLEGE YEARBOOK

By: Marc A.

End of college is the perfect occasion to remember the past years and create a yearbook. Actual yearbooks should be different than the old traditionnal yearbooks of the past.

A photo book is an interesting alternative to expensive traditionnal yearbooks and it allows flexibility and optimal creativity, making book creation easy and enjoyable. I wanted to create a special yearbook for my classmates and I. The project starts in the student association, where we raised money and named a «project manager». The whole creation process took only few days and the final result reached my expections, especially when I heard of my graduated classmates reaction after discovering their personalized yearbook.

MY EXPERIENCE

PROJECT KICK-OFF AND IMAGES RETRIEVING

Our promotion has 20 students and I was the one in charge of the album conception. The biggest advantage of making a photobook is that it is possible to order a small number of books and it can easily be adapted to the content we have.

The whole photoshoot process may be a complex and expensive project. But it is easy to fing a nice background and shoot pictures quicky, with a professionnal result.

To make this process easier, I created a Facebook group and sent an invitation to all my classmates. That way, everybody received the information needed. I also created an album on Picasa to allow each and everyone to send me their best pictures of themselves, but also photos of our parties or group activities. Everyone had the possibility to join a text with their photos.

That way, I almost got 100 photos.

LAYOUT

Once I retrieved all the images, I was set to start our yearbook photo album.

For the first part, I used a classic design to introduce our university and few of its famous graduated students. Those informations (including the school logo) were available on the college website.

For the second part, I created different themes: evenings, group activities, sports, etc. to create a less strict book that highlights our best school memories.

A must: I was able to create a personalized book for each and everyone. At the end, each person received a book with his picture on the first page. This is way much personal than the traditionnal yearbook where you stand among hundreds of other small pictures.

SHARING, VALIDATION AND ORDER

I first share the album on Facebook. Using the «Share pages» option, I could show it to everyone online. That way, everebody knew that the book was set to be printed. I didn’t have to pay with my own money, I waited till everyone has giving me their parts before ordering. Also, it was easier to convince people to pay once they had seen their copy online.